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1) “The current concern with new microbial threats has developed in at least four overlapping but distinct domains: emerging infectious disease; bioterrorism; the cutting-edge life sciences; and food safety”

2) “’Global health’ is a second field in which health threats have been problematized in new ways.”

3) “The regulation of what Ulrich Beck calls “modernization risks” comprises a third field in which biosecurity has been newly problematized.”

4) “Although there is a great sense of urgency to address contemporary biosecurity problems— and while impressive resources have been mobilized to do so — there is no consensus about how to conceptualize these threats, nor about what the most appropriate measures are to deal with them.”

The authors present a number of current strategies that are primarily developed around an emergency modality of intervention. The strategies and protocols currently implemented by numerous organizations involve short-term interventions and responses to the immediate threat or crisis rather than the long-term socioeconomic or geopolitical factors that contribute to the emergence of such threats. The current focus lies in emergency response and humanitarian aid rather than nation building or infrastructure developments.

More focus on the care, treatment, containment, and management of contagious diseases like Ebola would have increased its educational value, especially to first responders.

OSHA has set numerous occupational standards affecting almost every industry. In addition, OSHA conducts inspections to ensure compliance with safety standards. Failure to adhere to established standards could open up an organization to potential lawsuits and punitive actions. 

With over 80 citations, and a wide variety of sources (few of which are repeated), we know that this research article was infer that a good deal of time and care was spent on this article. There are lots of citations to steel investigation, structural and architectural references, government building standards, similar historical disasters, and news articles reporting on 9/11. Without even reading the article, one can suppose a good deal about the article and how it was produced.

Emergency response, in the sense of law enforcement, fire prevention, rescue, and EMS, is not addressed. However, humanitarian and disaster response, in the face of disease and illness, is related to the topics addressed in this article.

I looked more into the U.S. policy on uninsured patients, ER hospital policy, and how they are treated. If you go the ER without insurance, you are expected to pay the full bill; however you are guaranteed under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act to receive treatment regardless of your ability to pay it. There are assistance programs available to help those whom cannot afford to pay their medical bills. Some of these are private charities, there are government programs that help with those at or below the poverty line, and the hospitals themselves will often negotiate a much lower price than originally billed for to meet a patient’s financial need. Despite this, there are still many cases where all of the above are not sufficient enough to keep patients out of bankruptcy. (http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/go-to-er-without-insurance.htm)

FEMA, as a federal agency, is funded by the federal government as budgeted each year from available tax revenue.